Altered Shoes

Off to ArtFest first thing Wednesday morning. Completely changed my mind as to what I wanted to put into the gallery, I originally was going to do some encaustic pieces but when I tried to decide which way to go the encaustic muse decided to take a three martini lunch and not come back to the studio so I went with really makes me the most happy and that is.....SHOES....of course!

For me the shoes come the easiest, there is some planning involved, I usually I have a basic idea in my head but they really just flow out of me once I get started on them. First up is "Cinderella's Party Shoe", once the glass slipper was off and tucked away in the castle vault this is my interpretation of what she would wear to a fancy ball.

The shoe was covered in specialty paper, the inside is simply green tissue paper glued down with white glue, buttons, rhinstones, fancy trim, ribbon and some pieces of an old rhinestone necklace I had laying around finished it off. The heel is glass pieces colored with Pinata ink and some jewelry findings all glued together with E6000 (a super strong multi purpose glue for non-porous objects).

Since the theme for ArtFest is Once Upon A Time I thought if I had Cinderella then I better have something on the other end of the spectrum, so this next one is my shout out to all the "evil" ladies in fairy tales, although I am sure they were very misunderstood and just needed a group hug. Struggled with a name for it and have tentatively settled on "Wicked".

The shoe was covered in some black netted fabric and adorned with chunky glitter, fancy black and silver trim, the heel was the most challenging part, I glued on pieces of that glass you use for mosaics.  The decoration on the top is just two 5/8 washers with some microbeads glued into the center.

I think I am almost ready to go, there is a large pile of art stuff on the studio table to be crammed into my rolling craft carrier, lists laying everywhere, and cats are starting to freak out because they know Mommy is going somewhere and of course the best way to help her is to plant their furry butts in the middle of the open suitcase.

Finally, I am asking my readers to send out a prayer for my very dear friend, Sherri, who was going to ArtFest but ended up having to have quadruple bypass surgery yesterday, which went well thank goodness, but she has a lot of recovery time ahead of her.

Encaustic artwork

It's a glorious sunny Sunday here in Western Washington, the weather goddess kind of faked us out for while and sent some winter weather but the good stuff is back now. I finally finished my web design classes at the community college and have the software loaded up in the computer and am working my way through my huge manual. It is actually quite enjoyable, I love the "a-ha" moments when I do something right and it looks all purty. It will take a while before I have one designed for myself but I will get there.

ArtFest is just around the corner, the chatter on the Yahoo Group is reaching a fever pitch like it does every year. They have a gallery where you can display up to three of your pieces and I decided I might do some encaustic (wax) stuff. One of the classes I took last year at ArtFest was with the wonderful Judy Wise, a encaustic guru, the techniques I learned there along with the Encaustic Workshop book by Patricia Seggebruch  led me to these two pieces. Basically it is fusing specialty paper with encaustic medium (melted white beeswax and damar resin), adding layers of images, stickers, rub-ons and some texturing with oil paint, and more layers of medium. Finished touches were some gold foil detailing and addition of a micro-bead border on the blue piece. Great fun except the studio smelled like wax for a couple of days! Spousal Unit wanted to know what I was burning down.

The theme for ArtFest is Once Upon a Time so I am going to apply myself to making at least two pieces to take with that idea, perhaps something with fairies or dragons.

Last but not least I have to leave you with what seems to be my increasingly frequent cat pictures (Crazy Cat Ladies Unite!) but this was to cute not to share. Picture of Apollo is slightly blurry, I had to take it through the studio window, before he proceeded on to some other important thing, like chasing bugs.

The motto for this one is, "If you really don't have anything better to do, just sit and stare through the hole in the fence".

Sage that survived the winter, also a test from my mobile device, trying to get it to post to my blog.